41–50 of 79 posts
The insurance companies are the ones paying for care. The hospital systems are the ones charging for care. The entity that pays for care has every incentive to keep costs _low_. The entity that charges for care has every incentive to charge as much as possible. i.e. The ire of consumers should be directed at hospital systems rather than insurance companies.
Medical Billing is ripe for disruption, but of note, I don't know of any startup that has made significant inroads into this market. Anyone know why its so tough to break?
The last time I checked, 33% of US healthcare dollars went to paying people at the insurance company and people at the healthcare provider to negotiate with each other. One way to avoid this in the US is to go with an HMO, since they can be wildly profitable and still be much more efficient than an insurance company + independent providers. Of course, the problem with that is that non-emergency care from third-party…
Possibly. But there are countries in Europe where healthcare is primarily or to a large degree (or even entirely like in Switzerland, they don't even have any Medicare/Medicaid equivalents) financed through private insurance systems. Yet they manage to keep prices from spiraling through effective regulation.
Possibly naive, but hopefully trying to reason from first principles: The insurance companies are the ones paying for care. The hospital systems are the ones charging for care. The entity that pays for care has every incentive to keep costs _low_. The entity that charges for care has every incentive to charge as much as possible. i.e. The ire of consumers should be directed at hospital systems rather than insurance c…
Edit: here’s an article on the topic https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2018/05/25/6136857...
The last time I checked, 33% of US healthcare dollars went to paying people at the insurance company and people at the healthcare provider to negotiate with each other. One way to avoid this in the US is to go with an HMO, since they can be wildly profitable and still be much more efficient than an insurance company + independent providers. Of course, the problem with that is that non-emergency care from third-party…
Source: The Healing of America by T.R. Reid.
The last time I checked, 33% of US healthcare dollars went to paying people at the insurance company and people at the healthcare provider to negotiate with each other. One way to avoid this in the US is to go with an HMO, since they can be wildly profitable and still be much more efficient than an insurance company + independent providers. Of course, the problem with that is that non-emergency care from third-party…
Not every first world country has a true single-payer healthcare system. There are many variations that work better than what we have. The difference is that in the US we have accepted profit maximization as the legitimate primary goal in the healthcare system.
The last time I checked, 33% of US healthcare dollars went to paying people at the insurance company and people at the healthcare provider to negotiate with each other. One way to avoid this in the US is to go with an HMO, since they can be wildly profitable and still be much more efficient than an insurance company + independent providers. Of course, the problem with that is that non-emergency care from third-party…
> A better way to solve the problem is to go with a single-payer healthcare system Possibly. But there are countries in Europe where healthcare is primarily or to a large degree (or even entirely like in Switzerland, they don't even have any Medicare/Medicaid equivalents) financed through private insurance systems. Yet they manage to keep prices from spiraling through effective regulation.
I don't know Swiss politics but I also assume there isn't a bickering back-and-forth by party lines that end up distorting/underfunding any sort of healthcare.
Would love to see doctors and medical facilities nationwide convert, en masse, to paper checks. Let's see how quickly the insurers back off the fees.
They would absolutely love it. Paper checks extend their accounts payable.
Endless possibilities!
The insane paperwork we've built-up thanks to the industry isn't really serving our colletive best interests.
Possibly naive, but hopefully trying to reason from first principles: The insurance companies are the ones paying for care. The hospital systems are the ones charging for care. The entity that pays for care has every incentive to keep costs _low_. The entity that charges for care has every incentive to charge as much as possible. i.e. The ire of consumers should be directed at hospital systems rather than insurance c…